Browse Category: Creatures

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016): Roland Emmerich

If 1996’s Independence Day is the Titanic, the 2016 sequel Independence Day: Resurgence, is the iceberg that sank it. Despite 20 years of buildup and inflated ticket prices, the sequel, which cost twice the original, is on track to make less than one-third of the original’s total.

Resurgence is a half-hour shorter than its predecessor while trying to pack in more characters than a Game of Thrones season.

Independence Day (1996): Roland Emmerich

Today, we celebrate, Independence Day, not because it is a good movie, but because it is an AWESOME movie. Director Roland Emmerich has given us hits and misses, but the 1996 popcorn flick about an alien invasion starred Will Smith at the height of his powers and Jeff Goldblum at the apex of his, er, Goldblumness. Every eight-year-old boy’s fantasies of alien invasions were brought to the screen in theaters that July.

BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011): Uwe Boll

I saw this title on Showtime and immediately recorded it. I didn’t know a thing about it, except that Nazi movies are always fun. You know you’re going to get Nazis doing evil things, and the crazier they are the better the movie.

I should have stopped during the endless opening credits, because when one says “AND Clint Howard,” it’s time to quit. But I didn’t. I stayed for a sexual splatterfest tinged with National Socialism.

Doom (2005): Andrzej Bartkowiak

Hey, remember the cool shooter for PCs from the 1990s? They made it into a movie. Isn’t that cool? Isn’t it? Well they did. It was a dope game, remember?

Video games have a poor track record when turned into movies, an interesting conundrum considering that video games are constantly trying to become more like playable movies. Universal gives the old college try in reproducing one of the progenitors of first-person shooters (FPS).

Union Aerospace Corporation’s (UAC) Mars research base is under a Level 5 breach, and six scientists are under lockdown. The only men for the job are the brave Marines of the Rapid Response Tactical Squad (RRTS), led by The Rock.

Jurassic World (2015): Colin Trevorrow

Ah, remember the 90s? A decade when Steven Spielberg wowed us with a Michael Crichton story about dinosaurs; a chaos doctor; and some geneticists who, doggone it, just wanted to make kids smile?

Sure you do. Jurassic Park is a classic popcorn movie, and in 2015 we finally got a sequel. Yes, Jurassic World IS the sequel to Jurassic Park. Say it again: Jurassic World is the sequel to Jurassic Park. One more time: Jurassic World is the sequel to Jurassic Park.

ONE SENTENCE PLOT SUMMARY: Crazy scientists and investors make a crazy-dangerous dinosaur that goes on a crazy rampage through the crazy-expensive Jurassic World theme park.Continue Reading

Edge of Tomorrow (2014): Doug Liman

Live. Die. Repeat. Few taglines get better than that. Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt. Few headline actors get better than that. Edge of Tomorrow came and went in theaters in the summer of 2014, earning $100 million and finishing the year in 33rd place, a few tickets shy of Noah. It should have done better. Why didn’t it? Perhaps I can address that in today’s edition.

Godzilla (2014): Gareth Edwards

One of 2014’s surprise hits plunked down in mid-May and came away with $200 million, though that was only good enough for 13th on the domestic chart. Still, the success was enough to land Edwards a little movie called Rogue One, or How Princess Leia Stole the Death Star Plans, or If Edward Snowden was of Royal Blood and Could Fly.

Dozens of films after his Japanese debut in 1954, Godzilla arrived on American screens the largest he has yet been. Or at least he seemed that way. Detractors mocked his American fatness, and indeed the King of Monsters has a big gut, despite hibernating for untold decades.